With its large, cherubic features and long trailing tails, the moon moths are one of the prettiest among moths. The Indian Moon Moth belong to the family Saturniidae, commonly known as saturniids, which are among the largest of the moths.

The Indian moon moths are nocturnal or crepuscular – i.e. they favor night or dim/twilight conditions. They are also silk producing moths, and hence tagged as sericigenous. A single cocoon of this moon moth can give continuous fiber of 300 to 350 meters. Silk moths are hence valued based on their voltinism, i.e. the number of broods they produce in an year. The Indian moon moths are trivoltine as they produce up to 3 generations of broods per year.
Continue Reading »

5 Comments »

The lynx spiders don’t build a web for catching prey, but are ambush hunters, just like the crab spiders. They often stay motionless around flowers where they are sure the prey would come and say hello to them. Their long spiny legs and characteristic eyes make them easy to identify.

Hiding by nectar flowers assure them their daily diet, like the one below. They are considered euryphagous, which means they aren’t picky about the food they eat.
Continue Reading »

1 Comment »

The stream ruby belongs to the chlorocyphidae family of damselflies, commonly known as jewels.

Stream Ruby is one of these beautiful jewels, with their conspicuous rusty orange stripes on their thorax. Their natural habitat are hill streams, giving them the name stream ruby. This one might be a male; the stripes on the female are more yellowish.
Continue Reading »

3 Comments »

Darners are often found around ponds, lakes and marshes. The blue darners are conspicuous with their pale green face and sapphire blue eyes. Its exquisite features and elegant nature might have given it the name, “magnificent emperor”. Males have bluish thorax while in females it is yellow with an olive green tint. The one below must be a female blue darner.

Species: anax immaculifrons Family: aeshnidae
Common Names: Blue Darner, Magnificent Emperor
Location: @ home, Kottayam, Kerala
Continue Reading »

4 Comments »

Peeping into the Arabian Sea, nestling between Alibag and Murud, the popular tourist spots of Mumbaikars, is a world much unknown to the most of Maharashtra – Korlai.

Korlai is a 2 faced village, both by its geography and its soul. Both sides of the village are straddled by the sea, with the marathi fisher-folks on one side, and the indo-portuguese speaking villagers on the other side.

Standing prominent on the rocky headland side of the village is the 16th century Korlai fort, built by the Portuguese. Accounts, though hazy, says that it was originally ‘Castle Curlew’, built by Felipe Mascarenhas who was the 26th Viceroy of Portuguese India. When it was functional, the fort was protected on the inland side by a ditch, and accessible only by a drawbridge.

One of the interesting pieces of work inside the Korlai fort is the St Mathew’s church built circa 1630. Though now it is an abandoned, idling edifice, its features still give out the strategies and thoughts gone behind its construction.
Continue Reading »

7 Comments »